


if i’m losing a piece of me (maybe i don’t want heaven)

by permets (minyrrds)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Just angst, M/M, lmao this is just angst???, mostly kent being sad, set while they're in the q
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minyrrds/pseuds/permets
Summary: It’s August. It’s sticky and sweltering and there’s something about the way he shakes in your arms. Something about the way he can’t quite meet your eyes, and when he kisses you he feels so far away. There’s something about the way he’s not quite there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so [bell](http://littlestpersimmon.tumblr.com) drew [this amazingly heartbreaking thing](http://littlestpersimmon.tumblr.com/post/150700724683/littlestpersimmon-his-eyes-often-changed-like) and i cried and i needed to write out the scene so here we have sad, romantic parse
> 
> title from ["HEAVEN"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqQC7B_D0oY) by troye silvan

It’s August. It’s sticky and sweltering and there’s something about the way he shakes in your arms. Something about the way he can’t quite meet your eyes, and when he kisses you he feels so far away. There’s something about the way he’s not quite _there_.

The Christmas lights you strung up around the walls the day you first moved in, things you’ve carried with you no matter where you’ve gone for hockey, make the flush across his cheeks almost glow in their soft hum. A little bit of home and happiness tucked away where only the two of you can find it. His hair is mussed and slick against his forehead with sweat in some places, curing at the ends in the front. You wrap parts around your fingers and tug him closer to you, gently, carefully, as if the moment you’ve constructed for yourselves on a Sunday night in August, somewhere in the middle of Quebec that you couldn’t place on a map if you tried, will come crashing down if you’re not careful enough. When his soft lips press against yours, it’s almost possible to believe for a second that he loves you the way you love him. It’s almost possible to think that when you both leave here in a year, he’ll still be there on the other end of the phone, on the other side of a plane ride, waiting for you. When his hands fist in your shirt and your legs slot between his, when you run your fingers over the recently shaved back of his head and marvel in the softness, when his hot tongue slips in your mouth to slide against your own, you think, _maybe he loves me after all_.

Your kisses are languid, savoring. They memorize the way his lips feel against yours, they trace the inside of his mouth and the way he tastes. They nibble and tug and feel like slow dripping molasses. Things are slipping away from you, from the both of you.

(He’s taking his pills more, those little white pills in that little orange bottle, even though he tells you he’s not. He doubles, triples, quadruples doses, even though he tells you he won't. He’s pulling himself far, far away from you, even though he tells you he would never.)

His kisses fumble against your lips, against your skin. He presses the pace forward and you refuse to catch up, refuse to run after the burning fuse that make these moments run out so quickly and leave you with an aching feeling in your chest as he sleeps peacefully next to you, shifting out from your grasp just enough to know that it’s intentional. You refuse to let yourself run wild after something you know you’ll cry over later.

You pull back for a moment, just watching him. Watching the way the blue in his eyes looks so clear, like the water on the lake you spent lounging by during the summers before hockey was _everything_ (it was always everything to him, it just took you a while to catch up). The flush has spread across the bridge of his nose, bleeding through his cheekbones. You reach up and let your fingers trail across it, smiling just a bit at the fact that you were the one to make that flush happen, you were the one to make him such a mess, sweating and breathing hard on a cramped bed in August, hovering over you like you two were the only two people in the world.

The words catch in your throat. They wrap around your larynx, blocking off any air you could hope to suck in, leaving you gasping in shallow pants. He looks so beautiful right then, that you can convince yourself that this is all you’ll ever need, all you’ll ever want.

(You know that it would never be the same for him, but you let yourself ignore that right in this moment.)

When his hand curls around your face, you feel every single bit of defense in your body crumble and you melt into the bed. When his fingers trace the shell of your ear and tug playfully on your wild hair, running over the cowlick you hate, you smile and let your eyes flutter shut; the moment is too much for you, the sensory overload threatening tears from your ever changing eyes. You think of all the other times you’ve done _this_ , exactly this. You think of the first time, when you were too young but so eager and realizing what love was for the first time, you remember the time you two were almost caught and he had managed to cram himself in the unforgiving space under your bed, you remember the first time those three words slipped from your lips as your back arched off of the bed and you said his name like it was something holy (it was).

(You don’t remember saying it back.)

There’s something desperate about the way you two touch, something desperate in the way you say his name, in the way he says yours. Something finite and hovering, something feeling like the storm is already past the warning mark, just waiting moments to break, and you can’t seem to find shelter from it.

It’s going to end soon. He hasn’t said as much, but you can tell from the way he touches you (the way he doesn’t touch you anymore, not unless you’re like this). You can tell from the way he sits alone on the bus to and from games, instead of next to you like he has for years. You can tell from the way that your ability to sometimes be perfectly in sync (you are his oldest friend after all, his _best friend_ , you thought) only ever happens on the ice anymore. You can just tell.

In a few hours, this will all be over. He will have some flimsy excuse to go back to his own house, to his own family, leaving you to sleep in this bed alone, wrapped up in the smell and feel of him. Wrapped up in everything you worked so hard for, in everything you’re losing so fast it makes your head spin.

(But really, you’ve always known it would end this way, so was it ever actually fast, or just so slow that you never noticed until it was too late to keep your heart from feeling such painful things?)

So for right now, you let yourself fall, wrap yourself up in everything that is _Jack Zimmermann_ , everything that is this stupid boy who you love. You let yourself feel dangerous things, let the words that have been choking you all night tumble from your lips and hover in the space between the two of you and pray, for the first time in a while, that maybe it will all work out, and maybe, he could still be yours.

(It’s a selfish thought, but Jack has always been the more selfish of the two of you.)

“Jack.”

You press your cheek against his palm and a small smile finds its way onto your face.

“Zimms.”

He threads his fingers through your hair; you don’t open your eyes.

“I’m in love with you.”

 

The moment doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t break. This isn’t the first time you’ve said it, but you have a feeling it might be the last. The seconds stretch out between you two, and something has shifted, almost imperceptibly, but you were always the best at reading him. You don’t wait for him to say them back, you’re long past hope at this point, you just want him to know that you still feel that way, even if your time is quickly running out. You just want him to know.

(You just want him to love you back.)

“I know.”

His voice sounds like rough gravel and it tears something in you. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to keep the salt water from slipping between your lashes and sliding down into his waiting palm.

Before, you would make Star Wars jokes and laugh away the tension. Before, he would kiss you and make you forget your own name instead of responding. Before, it was easier to tell yourself he loved you too, he just had a different way of showing it, a different way of telling you.

Before, it didn’t quite hurt so much to let those words leave your lips.

 

(You just want him to love you back. Why couldn’t he just love you back?)

 

You let the moment slip, because it’s not the first, it’s not the last, it’s just the middle. The painful realization in the face of a storm, the darkening horizon at your front door and the only thing you can do it wait it out. Somehow, you’ll be okay in the end. Somehow, the both of you will be.

  
[ _His eyes often changed like mood rings, but his feelings always stayed the same. And maybe you did love him, but you never did quite say it back._ ]

**Author's Note:**

> the very last lines in brackets belong to bell!  
> come say hi on [twitter](http://twitter.com/virquo) or [tumblr](http://tooruoikawa.co.vu)~


End file.
